disappearance but are so destructive that one cannot speak simply either of their recuperation or their escape: from representations of the body to "body play" (organ-piercing, ritual suspension, etc.) to out-of-body experience to self-mutilation, autocastration, and suicide; from rock macho to punk aggression to a fascination with murderers (a certain journal called "Murder Can Be Fun," sold through Amok and REsearch; John Wayne Gacy's clown paintings for sale on Melrose Avenue) to brutal attacks on fans (GG Allen, serving time in prison). For instances and glosses see, for instance, Adam Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture, (rev. ed., Portland: Feral House, 1990).

5 In the critical rhetoric of "no longer" there is always an implicit "nor was it ever": everything closed off by such an analysis tracks itself back to its very origins. In The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), I pursued an analysis, along similar lines, of the history of the avant-garde: obituaries of the avant-garde tend not only to declare it dead now but in effect to claim it never really existed; its death is taken to prove that it never had any truth or force in the first place.

7 The Latah, one might say, is the pure Imp of the Imaginary. Burroughs: "This citizen have a Latah he import from Indo-China. He figure to hang the Latah and send a Xmas TV short to his friends. So he fix up two ropes--one gimmicked to stretch, the other the real McCoy. But that Latah get up in a feud state and put on his Santa Claus suit and make with the switcheroo. Come the dawning. The citizen put one rope on and the Latah, going along the way Latahs will, put on the other. When the traps are down the citizen hang for real and the Latah stand with the carny-rubber stretch rope. Well, the Latah imitate every twitch and spasm. Come three times."Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 79-80.